New Lenovo ThinkPads range from budget laptops to benchmark-eating behemoths

Last week, Lenovo unleashed a flood of new ThinkPads and IdeaPads, but the world's top PC maker isn't stopping there. On Wednesday, Lenovo announced seven additional ThinkPad laptops are receiving a Haswell refresh, bringing Intel's latest power-sipping processors to more of the company's laptop lineup.

ThinkPad T440p and T540p

Most intriguing are the updated ThinkPad T440p and ThinkPad T540p "premium business notebooks." The notebooks will include processor options all the way up to a full quad-core Core i7 while still offering up to 13.7 and 12.6 hours of battery life respectively with the help of an extended battery pack (though the endurance no doubt drops as you uptick the CPU options).

Some models will contain discrete Nvidia GT730M graphics, and options range up to 16GB of RAM, 4G LTE connectivity, and a 1TB hard drive. (Solid-state drives are also available.) As you would expect in a business laptop, there's an SD card reader and USB 3.0 ports abound.

ThinkPad W540

If measly GT730M graphics just don't cut it for you, there's the ThinkPad W540 mobile workstation, which crams in professional-grade Nvidia Quadro graphics and a 15.5-inch IPS display with a whopping 2880-by-1620 resolution. The firepower doesn't stop there: Options go all the way up to 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage (complete with RAID array options). Yes, 4G LTE is available, and this graphics-focused workhorse even ships with a Thunderbolt port.

Don't call the ThinkPad W540 a behemoth, though. At 1.06-inches thick and a hair over 5 lbs, this laptop is actually fairly svelte as far as professional workstations go.

ThinkPad L and E series

Lenovo's also refreshing its cheaper, small business-focused L- and E-series ThinkPads. These lineups don't pack quite as many bells and whistles as their bigger brothers, and they're a bit less potent. Don't look for Core i7 chips or fire-breathing discrete graphics in these budget-friendly business laptops, in other words.

Nevertheless, the new notebooks include a multitude of features designed for the workplace. The L-series ThinkPads pack Microsoft Lync certification and support for Intel's vPro security and management technology, while the E-series includes an optical drive and Lenovo's "OneLink" technology, which uses a single cable to connect your laptop to a OneLink Dock. And everything comes with noise-cancelling microphones for headache-free VoIP chats.

Look for the L- and E-series ThinkPads to land in October. The 14-inch ThinkPad L440 and 15-inch ThinkPad L540 both start at $729. The E-series will only "be available initially in selected markets," which probably won't include the U.S. off the bat: Lenovo lists the 14-inch ThinkPad E440 at €649 and the 15-inch ThinkPad E540 at €629.

The T-series notebooks and the ThinkPad W540, meanwhile, will hit the streets in November. Lenovo has yet to reveal pricing information, but don't expect them to come cheap.

Brad Chacos Senior Editor

Brad Chacos spends the days jamming to Spotify and digging through desktop PCs. He covers the gaming, graphics cards, and how-to beats for PCWorld, and spends his mornings running the news desk for PCWorld, Macworld, Greenbot, and TechHive.More by Brad Chacos